As someone with extensive marketing experience, I understand the effectiveness of targeted email campaigns and all the benefits they can bring to a business. If you are also considering this approach but are unsure:
- if it’s worth it;
- how to start;
- what it will cost you;
buckle up! In this post, I will answer all of your questions!.
What is targeted email marketing
Targeted email marketing is a strategy where you first segment your users based on insights into their behaviors, habits, interests, or demographics, and then create targeted emails tailored to each specific segment of your target audience. For more information on these factors, please read here.
If you receive an email with your name on the subject line, that doesn’t always mean it’s a targeted email. Broadcast emails can be personalized but they are not exactly a targeted email. Targeted emails go beyond just personalization — they include content specifically relevant to the recipient’s needs. For example, offering product recommendations based on a customer’s purchase history or sending a follow-up email when they leave items in their shopping cart. These emails respond directly to a customer’s behavior or preferences. Let me show you the examples.
Targeted email marketing campaign examples
If you’ve ever made a purchase from the Cult Beauty website, you probably know that you’ll be getting a lot of similar recommendations in your email address.
After purchasing Kayali perfume from this website, I now receive notifications about new releases and any discounts on them.
Another great example of a targeted email is this one from the Ukrainian brand The Lace. After checking some of their goods, I received an email featuring similar products with a discount.
Sephora, a popular cosmetics retailer, went even further. It “reminds” you to restock previously purchased products after some time.
Also, Sephora reminds you about the products in your abandoned cart, driving the FOMO effect.
Targeted email marketing use cases
Not only do retailers actively utilize targeted email marketing, but many other large and small businesses, including SaaS companies, do the same. Let me show you how.
- Lead nurturing. Depending on where your leads are in your marketing funnel, you can send them educational materials about your goods or services (engagement stage), offer discounts or a free trial (purchase stage), and give them personalized rewards for choosing your product or service (advocacy stage).
- User re-engagement. Customers who abandoned their carts or those who haven’t visited your website for a long time can be re-engaged with a simple reminder, a discount, or a personalized suggestion.
- Seasonal promotions. Depending on the customization level, seasonal promotions can also become a targeted email campaign if you carefully cater the content using your knowledge of customer preferences, past buying behavior, location, work needs, or other factors.
- Personalized product/service recommendations. These can be a common “See what you recently viewed” feature on a retailer’s website or more sophisticated recommendations from a SaaS platform that suggests new, versatile features based on how users have previously interacted with the service.
- Customer loyalty programs. By rewarding loyal customers with exclusive benefits and discounts, you increase sales and foster long-term relationships with them, as in the example below.
Benefits of targeted email marketing
While the previous use cases suggest certain advantages, let’s now look at the primary benefits that motivate marketers to invest time into segmenting subscribers and creating tailored email campaigns.
Increased engagement
This is probably the most significant benefit that a business can get when it starts taking target customers’ needs/wants into consideration. By creating relevant emails with carefully curated and personalized content, you get higher click-through and open rates. Additionally, recipients find such messages more relevant which leads us to the next point.
Enhanced customer retention
When bombarded with generic emails, people tend to unsubscribe faster than you blink. Relevant, timely emails strengthen your relationships, encouraging repeat purchases and customer loyalty.
Higher conversion rates
Personalized recommendations, cart reminders, and exclusive offers incentivize new customers and loyal users to get back to your website and make new purchases.
Better ROI
Targeted campaigns are more efficient than mass emails. They include information that is much more likely to be interesting to customers, making them more likely to interact with emails and your site, app, or platform.
Lower unsubscribe rates
When your content hits the right note, subscribers are far less likely to hit “unsubscribe.”
Stronger brand loyalty
The more customers interact with your emails and products or services, the stronger the bond becomes. When consistently sending relevant messages, you foster deeper connections, customer loyalty, and advocacy for your brand.
Valuable insights on your customers
Data gathered for targeted campaigns and data you get after the campaign is launched give you a lot of insights into customer behaviors and preferences. By analyzing this information on your target audience, you can refine future campaigns, adjust relevant content, optimize timing, and strategies, and make your campaigns more effective with each iteration.
Targeted email marketing cost
I bet it’s the most interesting part for you, as we all want to know if the juice is worth the squeeze.
First of all, you need to understand what factors contribute to the price of a targeted email marketing campaign. Your main item of expenditure would be a robust email-sending solution. There are many options on the market. Look for one that offers:
- Email templates – pre-designed email templates can save you time and money by reducing the need for a professional designer.
- Testing capabilities – to check how your emails look on different devices and email clients.
- Data analysis and reporting features – robust analytics help you track key metrics like deliverability, open, click-through rates, and conversions.
- Personalization and dynamic content options – personalization features allow you to tailor emails to individual recipients without a lot of manual effort.
Other major items of expenditure include an email hosting solution (if you don’t have one yet), a customer relationship management (CRM) system (again, only if you don’t have it yet), and a tool to track user activities on your website, app, or platform to collect the customer data for your campaigns. The most popular tools of this kind are Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Adobe Analytics, and Amplitude.
As you are free to use any automation tools to manage customer relations, host emails, and set up any level of customer activity tracking, I can’t provide you with the cost of your targeted email campaign. However, I can compare the email-sending prices for you to help you choose a reliable email-sending platform.
Let’s say you have a list of 5,000 subscribers and plan to email them twice a month. Now, let’s check the pricing of the platforms that also offer templates with dynamic tags, email testing features, and campaign analysis since you would likely need them. Cost/ 10K emails in US dollars:
- Mailtrap - 15
- Sendgrid - 25*
- Mailchimp - 94.21*
- Mailjet - 17
- Constant contact - 80*
- GetResponse - 45.9*
- Brevo - 17
*for an email list of 5K contacts
Keep in mind that the more email marketing automation you implement, the more expensive it becomes. In addition to the cost of automation software, you’ll also need to hire technical specialists to handle integrations and establish effective workflows.
We appreciate you chose this part of the article to know about targeted email marketing cost. Go to Mailtrap blog to read the full version of the article!